|It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horseman. The
horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter
from the dome of the court-house and bathe the green plains of Syracuse
with mellow splendor. The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern
sky look soft and yielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd
winds slowly o'er the lea, and all nature seems oppressed with the
solemn hush and stillness of the surrounding and engulfing horror.
The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll
road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cay
use plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is
singing a merry song. Damon has been, delayed by road agents and
wash-outs, and he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little
too long and dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making
up time now and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his
part. He and Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of
fine-cut from each other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before
the curtain, bows and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders
the band to play something soothing, gives Damon the appointment
of superintendent of public instruction, and Pythias the Syracuse
post-office, and everything is lovely. Orchestra plays something
touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno. _In hoc usufruct nux vomica est_.
A TRYING SITUATION.
|There are a great many things in life which go to atone for the
disappointments and sorrows which one meets, but when a young man's
rival takes the fair Matilda to see the base-ball game, and sits under
an umbrella beside her, and is at the height of enjoyment, and gets the
benefit of a "hot ball" in the pit of his stomach, there is a nameless
joy settles down in the heart of the lonesome young man, such as the
world can neither give nor take away.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XIX--A STORY OF SPOTTED TAIL.
_Trifling Incidents Make Men Great.--Chief Big Mouth.--A Quarrel between
Big Mouth and Spotted Tail.--The Tragic End._
|The popularity of the above-named chieftain dates from a very trifling
little incident, as did that of many other men who are now great.
Spotted Tail had never won much distinction up to that time, except as
the owner of an appetite, in the presence of which his tribe stood in
dumb and terrible awe.
During the early days of what is now the great throbbing and ambitious
West, the tribe camped near Fort Sedgwick, and Big Mouth, a chief of
some importance, used to go over to the post regularly for the purpose
of filling his brindle hide full of Fort Sedgwick Bloom of Youth.
As a consequence of Big Mouth's fatal yearning for liquid damnation, he
generally got impudent, and openly announced on the parade ground that
he could lick the entire regular army. This used to offend some of the
blood-scarred heroes who had just arrived from West Point, and in the
heat of the debate they would warm the venerable warrior about two feet
below the back of his neck with the flat of their sabers.
This was a gross insult to Big Mouth, and he went back to the camp,
where he found Spotted Tail eating a mule that had died of inflammatory
rheumatism. Big Mouth tearfully told the wild epicure of the way he had
been treated, and asked for a council of war. Spot picked his teeth with
a tent pin, and then told the defeated relic of a mighty race that if he
would quit strong drink, he would be subjected to fewer insults.
Big Mouth then got irritated, and told S. Tail that his remarks showed
that he was standing in with the aggressor, and was no friend to his
people.
Spotted Tail said that Mr. B. Mouth was a liar, by yon high heaven, and
before there was time to think it over, he took a butcher knife, about
four feet long, from its scabbard and cut Mr. Big Mouth plumb in two
just between the umbilicus and the watch pocket.
As the reader who is familiar with anatomy has already surmised, Big
Mouth died from the effects of this wound, and Spotted Tail was at once
looked upon as the Moses of his tribe. He readily rose to prominence,
and by his strict attention to the duties of his office, made for
himself a name as a warrior and a pie biter, at which the world turned
pale.
This should teach us the importance of taking the tide at its flood,
which leads on to fortune, and to lay low when there is a hen on, as
Benjamin Franklin has so truly said.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XX--THE ROMANCE OF HORSE-SHOEING.
_Recreation with a Bronco--Careful Preparations--The Bronco humps
Himself Like a Camel--The Bronco in a Sling--The Bronco Full of Spirit._
|Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by
witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco.
Whenever I get low-spirited and feel that a critical public don't
appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown
& Boole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious
bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better
prepared to light the battle of life.
They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad
sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco,
to the ends of which--the sinches, I mean--are attached ropes, four in
number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are
wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like
a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped
under his body and attached to the ropes.
Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession.
The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand
aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a good deal and switches his
tail, while the ropes continue to work in the pulleys, and the man at
the capstan spits on his hands and rolls up on the wheel. After a while
the bronco hangs from the ceiling like a discouraged dish rag, and after
trying for two or three hundred times unsuccessfully to kick a hole
in the starry firmament, he yields, and hangs at half mast while the
blacksmith shoes him.
Yesterday I felt as though I must see something cheerful, and so I went
over to watch a bronco getting his shoes on for the round-up. I was
fortunate. They led up a quiet, gentlemanly appearing plug with all the
weary, despondent air of a disappointed bronco who has had aspirations
for being a circus horse, and has "got left." When they put the sinches
around him he sighed as though his heart would break, and his great,
soulful eyes were wet with tears. One man said it was a shame to put a
gentle pony into a sling like that in order to shoe him, and the general
feeling seemed to be that a great wrong was being perpetrated.
Gradually the ropes tightened on him and his abdomen began to disappear.
He rose till he looked like a dead dog that had been fished out of the
river with a grappling iron. Then he gave a grunt that shook the walls
of the firmament, and he reached out about five yards till his hind feet
felt of a greaser's eye, and with an athletic movement he jumped through
the sling and lit on the blacksmith's forge with his head about three
feet up the chimney. He proceeded then to do some extra ground and lofty
tumbling and kicking. A large anvil was held up for him to kick till he
tired himself out, and then the blacksmith put a fire and burglar-proof
safe over his head and shod him.
The bronco is full of spirit, and, although docile under ordinary
circumstances, he will at times get enthusiastic, and do things which he
afterward, in his sober moments, bitterly regrets.
Some broncos have formed the habit of bucking. They do not all buck.
Only those that are alive do so. When they are dead they are-more
subdued and gentle.
A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down
his life if necessary. His master's life, I mean.
When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and
asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the
ground that I have a family dependent on mo, and furthermore, that I
am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government
hinges on me.
Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the
republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so
scarce.
Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some In
principled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner
or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!!
Lots of people never see this. They see how smoothly the machinery of
government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They
do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed
through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house,
or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a
large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum.
This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public
will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me
while I am alive.
A CHILD'S FAITH.
|During a big thunder shower a while ago little Willie, who slept up
stairs alone, got scared and called his mother, who came up and asked
him what he was frightened about. Willie frankly admitted that the
thunder was a little too much for a little boy who slept alone.
"Well, if you are afraid," said his mother, pushing back the curls from
his forehead, "you should pray for courage."
"All right, ma," said Willie, an idea coming into his head; "suppose you
stay up here and pray while I go down stairs and sleep with paw."
HOW TO PRESERVE TEETH.
|I find," said an old man to a _Boomerang_ reporter, yesterday, "that
there is absolutely no limit to the durability of the teeth, if they are
properly taken care of. I never drink hot drinks, always brush my
teeth morning and evening, avoid all acids whatever, and although I am
sixty-five years old, my teeth are as good as ever they were."
"And that is all you do to preserve your teeth, is it?"
"Yes, sir; that's all--barring, perhaps, the fact that I put them in a
glass of soft water nights."
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXI--EXPERIENCE ON THE FEVERISH HORNET.
_Every Profession Has Its Style--Not much Difference in Folks--Timber
line and Katooter--Katooter Was a Very Smart Man._
|Yes, that's so," said Woodtick Williams thoughtfully, as he looked out
across the divide and beyond the foothills, toward the top of the range
where the eternal snow was glittering in the summer sun.
"You are eminently correct. The gentleman from Buckskin has stated
the exact opinion of the subscriber, sure as death and semi-annual
assessments.
"Every profession has its style of lead and its peculiar dip toward the
horizon. From the towering congressman, down to the neglected advance
agent of the everlasting gospel, every profession, I allow, has its
peculiar lingo. Every pork-and-beans pilgrim from the States that's been
in my camp for twenty-seven years has said that the miner slings more
unnecessary professional racket than anybody else; but that ain't so.
Take folks as they assay, from blossom rock to lower level, there ain't
much difference.
"Nine years ago, I and Timberline Monroe and Katooter Lemons, from
Zion, struck the Feverish Hornet up on Slippery Ellum. First we knew the
prospecting season had closed up on us and, as the lay-out for surface
had pinched out, we decided to sink on the Hornet, just for luck.
"So Timberline, Katooter and me went over to Huckleberry Oleson's
store at at the lower camp and soaked our physiognomy for chuck, and
valley-tan, and a blastin' outfit for the job.
"Down five foot she showed 150 colors to a hunk of rock no bigger'n a
plug of tobacker, with wall rocks well defined both sides and foot wall
slick as a confidence game in 'Frisco.
"The quartz, with a light coat of gouge, looked as if she'd been jammed
through the formation like a Sabbath-school scholar's elbow through a
custard pie, and it had crushed the prehistoric stuffin' and pre-adamite
sawdust out of the geological crust in good shape.
"'Katooter,' says I, 'if she shows up this way all the way down, I be
teetotally dodbuttered if I don't think we've cornered the sugar at
last. We'll run her down to ten foot and see how she looks to the naked
eye.'
"Ten foot down she'd widen to three foot between walls, with solid gray
quartz as pretty as a bank book. Then we made a mill run of five pounds
in a half-gallon mortar and cleared up a dollar's worth of dust on the
blade of a long-handled shovel.
"The prospectus of the Feverish Hornet was very cheering indeed.
"I sat down on a candle-box and sang something. I always twitter a few
notes when I feel tickled about anything.
"Katooter listened to my singing a little while, and then he went
down the gulch murmuring, something about my music and intimating that
prosperity always had its little drawbacks after all.
"He slid down to the Frescoed Hell and jammed his old freckled hide so
full of horse liniment of the vintage of '49 that he got entirely off
the lead, and drifted so far into poverty rock that he didn't know
Timberline nor me from a stomach pump.
"That's generally the way with men that turn up their noses at vocal
music.
"Well, he got no better so rapidly that next day he was occupying a
front seat at the biggest delirium triangle matinee you ever heard of,
and was the sole proprietor of the biggest aggregation of seal-brown
tarantulas and variegated caterpillars and imported centipedes that ever
exhibited in Columbia's fair domain.
"Every little while he'd nail some diabolical insect crawling up his
sleeve or gently walking through his hair, and then he'd yell like a
maniac and pray and swear like a hired man.
"The atmosphere seemed to be level-full of bumblebees as big as a
cook-stove, and every time they'd cuddle up to him of sink on him with
their sultry little gimlets, Katooter would jump up and whoop like a
Piute medicine man trying to assuage a wide waste of turbulent cucumber.
"At these times Katooter would lay aside his wardrobe, and, throwing me
into the fire-place and Timberline under the bed, he would wander forth
into the starlight, with the thermometer down to 37 degrees, and wrapped
in nothing but his surging thoughts.
"By the time Timberline and me would get up and swab the cobwebs and
cinders out of our eyes, Katooter would be half way up the gulch and
lighting out like a freckled Greek slave hunting for a clothing store.
"First along we used to run after him and try to tire him out and corral
him, but he was most too skipful, and apparently so all-fired anxious to
put all the intervening distance he could between himself and the fuzzy
tarantulas and fall style of centipede, that he made some pretty tall
time, considering the poor trail and the light mountain air.
"Then another thing; when we got to him he was so pesky mean to hang on
to.
"You've probably tried before now, when you was small, to catch the boy
who tied your shirt to the top limb of a dead tree, and you have thrown
all your energy into the effort, but you decided after awhile to wait
till he got his clothes on before you punished him.
"That's the way it was with Katooter. He was the smartest man I ever
tried to gather into the fold. We'd think we had him, and all at once
he'd glide between our legs like a yaller dog and laugh a wild kind
of laugh that would run the thermometer down 13 degrees, and away he'd
glimmer up the trail like a red-headed right of way.
"So I got mad at last, and used to chase him with a lariat and Yellow
Fever.
[Illustration: 0151]
"Yellow Fever was a sorrel mule that belonged to the firm. We called him
Yellow Fever because he was so fatal.
"Well, when Yellow Fever and me got after Katooter with the lariat, we
most always gathered him in.--[Bless my soul, how I'm stringing this
yarn out.]
"Well, to make a long story short, Katooter rallied after a while, and
during the spell his chilblains was convalescing, and some more new skin
growing on his system where he had barked it off running through the
sage-brush, and falling into old deserted prospect holes. I had an offer
of $50,000 for my third in the Feverish Hornet, and sold.
"Then I went down to Truckee and bought a little house of an old
railroad man down there, and grubstaked myself for the winter, and
allowed I'd lay off till the snow left the range in the spring.
"One night, about half after 12, I judge, I heard somebody step along to
the window of my boudoir. Hearing it at that time of night, I reckoned
that something crooked was going on, so I slid out of bed and got my
Great Blood Searcher and Liver Purifier, with the new style of center
fire and cartridge ejector, and slid up to the window, calculating to
shove a tonic into whoever it might be that was picnicking around my
claim.
"I looked out so as to get a good idea of where I wanted to sink on him,
and then I thought before I mangled him I'd ask him if he had any choice
about which part of his vitals he wanted to preserve, so I sang out to
him:
"Look out below there, pard, for I'm going to call the meeting to order
in a minute! Just throw up your hands, if you please, and make the grand
hailing sign of distress, or I'll have to mutilate you! Just show me
about where you'd have the fatal wound, and be spry about it, too,
because I've got my brief costume on, and the evening air is chill!"
"He didn't understand me, apparently, for a gurgling laugh welled up
from below, and the party sings back:
"Hullo, Fatty, is that you? Just lookin' to see if you'd fired up yet.
You know I was to come round and flag you if second seven was out Well,
I've been down to the old man's to see what's on the board. Three is two
hours late and four is on time. There's two sevens out and two sections
of nine. Skinney'll take out first seven and Shorty'll pull her with
102. It's you and me for second seven, with Limber Jim on front end
and French to hold down the caboose. First fire is wrong side up in a
washout this side of Ogallalla, and old Whatshisname that runs 258 got
his crown sheet caved in and telescoped his headlight into the middle of
the New Jerusalem. You know the little Swede that used to run extra for
Old Hotbox on the emigrant awhile? Well, he was firing on 258 and he's
under three flats and a coal-oil tank, with a brake beam across his
coupler, and his system more or less relaxed. He's gone to the sweet
subsequently, too. Rest of the boys are more or less demoralized, and
side-tracked for repairs. Now you don't want to monkey around much,
for if you don't loom up like six bits and go out on the tick, the old
man'll give you a time cheek and the oriental grand bounce. You hear the
mellow trill of my bazoo?"
"Then I slowly uncorked the Great Blood Purifier, and moving to the
footlights where the silvery moonbeams could touch up my dazzling
outlines, I said: 'Partner, I am pleased and gratified to have met you.
I don't know the first ding busted thing you have said to me, but that
is my misfortune. I am a plain miner, and my home is in the digestive
apparatus of the earth, but for professional melody of the chin, you
certainly take the cake. You also take the cake basket and what cold pie
there is in on the dump. My name is Wood-tick Williams. I discovered the
Feverish Hornet up on Slippery Elm. I am proud, you know. Keep right on
getting more and more familiar with your profession, and by and by, when
nobody can understand you, you will be promoted and respected, and
you will at last be a sleeping-car conductor, and revel in the biggest
mental calm, and wide shoreless sea of intellectual stagnation that the
world ever saw. You will----
"But he was gone.
"Then I took a pillow sham and wiped some pulverized crackers off the
soles of my feet, and went to bed, enveloped in a large gob of gloom."
THE PICNIC PLANT.
|The picnic plant will soon lift its little head to the sunshine, and
the picnic manager will go out and survey the country, to find where the
most God-forsaken places are, and then he will get up an excursion to
some of these picturesque mud-holes and sand-piles; and the man who
swore last year that he would never go to another picnic, will pack up
some mustard, and bay rum, and pickles, and glycerine, and a lap-robe,
and some camphor, and a spy-glass, and some court-plaster; and he will
heave a sigh and go out to the glens and rural retreats, and fill his
skin full of Tolu, Rock and Rye, and hatred toward all mankind and
womankind; and he will skin his hands, and try to rub the downy fluff
and bloom from a cactus by sitting down on it.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXII--ANCIENT BRIC-A-BRAC
_A Mound in Medicine Bow Range--I Started to Dig Into the Vast
Sarcophagus--A Glad Shout from, the Scene of Operations--A Large Queen
Anne Tear Jug._
|During my rambles through the Medicine Bow range of the Rocky mountains
recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although
worn down somewhat and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope
and the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time
very large and high.
This, I was told, had, no doubt, been the burial place of some ancient
tribe or race of men, the cemetery, perhaps, of a nation now unknown.
Here in the heart of a new world, where men who had known the region
for fifteen or twenty years, are now called "old timers," where "new
discoveries" had been made within my own recollection, we found the
sepulcher of a nation that was old when the Pilgrims landed on the
shores of Columbia.
I am something of an antiquarian, with all my numerous charms, and I
resolved to excavate at this spot and learn the hidden secrets of those
people who lived when our earth was young.
I started to dig into the vast sarcophagus. The ground was very hard.
The more I worked the more I felt that I was desecrating the burial
place of a mighty race of men, now powerless to defend themselves
against the vandal hands that sought to mar their eternal slumber.
I resolved to continue my researches according to the vicarious plan. I
secured the services of a hardened, soulless hireling, who did not wot
of the solemn surroundings and who could dig faster than I could. He
proceeded with the excavation business, while I sought a shady dell
where I could weep alone.
It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself--=
````The knights are dust,
````Their swords are rust;
````Their souls are with
````The saints, we trust.=
Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet,
made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States
mining laws.
I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process
between a piece of micaceous slate and a fragment of deoderized,
copper-stained manganese.
But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the wood-ticks.
Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe, and
which we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is
the same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as "Silver Threads
Among the Gold."
It has been in one form and another through the ever-shifting ages all
along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of
various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the
spring trade.
All we see or hear or feel, is old. Truth itself is old. Old and falling
into disuse, too. Outside of what I am using in my business, perhaps not
over two or three bales are now on the market.
Here in the primeval solitude, undisturbed by the foot of man, I had
found the crumbling remnants of those who once walked the earth in their
might and vaunted their strength among the powers of their world.
No doubt they had experienced the first wild thrill of all-powerful
love, and thought that it was a new thing. They had known, with mingled
pain and pleasure, when they struggled feebly against the omnipotent
sway of consuming passion, that they were mashed, and they flattered
themselves that they were the first in all the illimitable range of
relentless years who had been fortunate enough to get hold of the
genuine thing. All others had been base imitations.
Here, perhaps, on this very spot, the Aztec youth with a bright-eyed
maiden on his arm had pledged lifelong fidelity to her shrine, and in
the midnight silence had stolen away from her with a pang of vigorous
regret, followed by the sobs of his soul's idol and the demoralizing,
leaden rain of buckshot, with the compliments and best wishes of the old
man.
While I was meditating upon these things, a glad shout from the scene
of operations attracted my attention. I rose and went to the scene of
excavation and found, to my unspeakable astonishment and pleasure, that
the man had unearthed a large Queen Anne tear jug, with Etruscan
work upon the exterior. It was simply one of the old-fashioned
single-barreled tear jugs, made for a one eyed man to cry into. The
vessel was about eighteen inches in height by five or six inches in
diameter.
The graceful, yet perhaps severe pottery of the Aztecs, convinces me
that they were fully abreast of the present century in their knowledge
of the arts and sciences.
Space will not admit of an extended description of this
ancient tear cooler, but I am still continuing the antiquarian
researches,--vicariously, of course--and will give this subject more
attention during the summer.
JOINT POWDER.
|It don't do to fool with joint powder. It's powerful stuff. I had a
$10,000 mine over in the Queen of Shelby district in '51 called the
Goshallhemlock claim. I was offered $10,000 for it, with $5,000 in
sagebrush placer stock besides, if she opened up as well ten foot
further down.
We put in a blast of joint powder, and when we went to make an
examination, we couldn't find the Goshallhemlock with an assessor and
a search warrant. The hole was there, but there wasn't quartz enough to
throw at a yaller dog.
My idea is to sell a mine just before you put in the joint powder, and
then if the buyer wants to blow the property into the middle of next
Christmas let him do it.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XIII--THE TWO-HEADED GIRL.
_The Power of a Two-headed Girl to Cheer the Sad--She Is not Beautiful,
but her Color Is Distinct--As a Show She Draws Better than a Scientific
Lecture._
|The cultivated two-headed girl has visited the West. It is very rare
that a town the size of Laramie experiences the rare treat of witnessing
anything so enjoyable. In addition to the mental feast which such a
thing affords, one goes away feeling better--feeling that life has more
in it to live for, and is not after all such a vale of tears as he had
at times believed it.
Through the trials and disappointments of this earthly pilgrimage,
the soul is at times cast down and discouraged. Man struggles against
ill-fortune and unlooked-for woes, year after year, until he becomes
misanthropical and soured, but when a two-headed girl comes along and
he sees her it cheers him up. She speaks to his better nature in two
different languages at one and the same time, and at one price.
When I went to the show I felt gloomy and apprehensive. The eighteenth
ballot had been taken and the bulletins seemed to have a tiresome
sameness. The future of the republic was not encouraging. I felt as
though, if I could get first cost for the blasted thing, I would sell
it.
I had also been breaking in a pair of new boots that day, and spectators
had been betting wildly on the boots, while I had no backers at three
o'clock in the afternoon, and had nearly decided to withdraw on the last
ballot. I went to the entertainment feeling as though I should criticise
it severely.
The two-headed girl is not beautiful. Neither one of her, in fact, is
handsome. There is quite a similarity between the two, probably because
they have been in each other's society a great deal and have adopted the
same ways.
She is an Ethiopian by descent and natural choice being about the same
complexion as Frank Miller's oil blacking, price ten cents.
She was at one time a poor slave, but by her winning ways and genuine
integrity and genius, she has won her way to the hearts of the American
people. She has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that two heads are
better than one.
A good sized audience welcomed this popular favorites. When she came
forward to the foot-lights and made her two-ply bow she was greeted by
round after round of applause from the _elite_ of the city.
I felt pleased and gratified. The fact that a recent course of
scientific lectures here was attended by from fifteen to thirty people,
and the present brilliant success of the two-headed girl proved to me,
beyond a doubt, that we live in an age of thought and philosophical
progress.
Science may be all right in its place, but does it make the world
better? Does it make a permanent improvement on the minds and thoughts
of the listener? Do we go away from such a lecture feeling that we have
made a grand stride toward a glad emancipation from the mental thraldom
of ignorance and superstition? Do people want to be assailed, year after
year, with a nebular theory, and the Professor Huxley theory of natural
selections and things of that nature?
No! 1,000 time no!
They need to be led on quietly by an appeal to their better natures.
They need to witness a first-class bureau of monstrosities, such as men
with heads as big as a band wagon, women with two heads, Cardiff giants,
men with limbs bristling out all over them like the velvety bloom on a
prickly pear.
When I get a little leisure, and can attend to it, I am going to
organize a grand constellation of living wonders of this kind, and make
thirteen or fourteen hundred farewell tours with it, not so much to
make money, but to meet a long-felt want of the American people, for
something which will give a higher mental tone to the tastes of those
who never lag in their tireless march toward perfection.
OUR COMPLIMENTS.
|We have nothing more to say of the editor of the Sweetwater _Gazette_.
Aside from the fact that he is a squint-eyed, consumptive liar, with
a breath like a buzzard and a record like a convict, we don't know
anything against him. He means well enough, and if he can evade the
penitentiary and the vigilance committee for a few more years, there is
a chance for him to end his life in a natural way. If he don't tell the
truth a little more plentifully, however, the Green River people will
rise as one man and churn him up till there won't be anything left of
him but a pair of suspenders and a wart.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XIV--A PATHETIC EPISODE IN NORTHERN WISCONSIN.
_A Trip to Northern Wisconsin--How Foreign Lumber Is manufactured--Iron
Dogs--A Sad Accident--? The Funeral Procession--A Solemn Moral._
|I have just returned from a trip up the North Wisconsin railway, where
I went to catch a string of codfish, and anything else that might be
contagious. The trip was a pleasant one, and productive of great good in
many ways. I am hardening myself to railway traveling, like Timberline
Jones' man, so that I can stand the return journey to Laramie in July.
Northern Wisconsin is the place where the "foreign lumber" comes from
which we use in Laramie in the erection of our palatial residences. I
visited the mill last week that furnished the lumber used in the Oasis
hotel at Greeley. They yank a big wet log into that mill and turn it
into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay
car. The log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs while it is
being worked into lumber. These iron dogs are not like those we see on
the front steps of a brown-stone house occasionally. They are another
breed of dogs.
The managing editor of the mill lays out the log in his mind, and works
it into dimension stuff, shingle bolts, slabs, edgings, two by fours,
two by eights, two by sixes, etc., so as to use the goods to the best
advantage, just as a woman takes a dress pattern and cuts it so she
won't have to piece the front breadths, and will still have enough left
to make a polonaise for the last-summer gown.
I stood there for a long time watching the various saws and listening
to their monotonous growl, and wishing that I had been born a successful
timber thief instead of a poor boy without a rag to my back.
At one of these mills, not long ago, a man backed up to get away from
the carriage, and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was
revolving at the rate of about 200 times a minute. The saw took a large
chew of tobacco from the plug he had in his pistol pocket, and then
began on him.
But there's no use going into details. Such things are not cheerful.
They gathered him up out of the sawdust and put him in a nail keg and
carried him away, but he did not speak again. Life was quite extinct.
Whether it was the nervous shock that killed him, or the concussion of
the cold saw against his liver that killed him, no one ever knew.
[Illustration: 0163]
The mill shut down a couple of hours so that the head sawyer could file
his saw, and then work was resumed once more.
We should learn from this never to lean on the buzz saw when it moveth
itself aright.
THE SECRET OF HEALTH.
|Health journals are now asserting, that to maintain a sound
constitution you should lie only on the right side. The health journals
may mean well enough; but what are you going to do if you are editing a
Democratic paper?
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXV--BILL NYE ESSAYS A NOVELETTE.
_Harry Bevans--Fanny Buttonhook--True Love Takes its Usual Course--A
Letter to Fanny--A Sweet, Short, Summer--A Happy Marriage--Little
Birdie._
|I never wrote a novel, because I always thought it required more of a
mashed raspberry imagination than I could muster, but I was the business
manager, once, for a year and a half, of a little two-bit novelette that
has never been published.
I now propose to publish it, because I cannot keep it to myself any
longer.
Allow me, therefore, to reminisce.
Harry Bevans was an old schoolmate of mine in the days of ([x-y]/2)3, and
although Bevans was not his sure-enough name, it will answer for the
purposes herein set forth. At the time of which I now speak he was more
bashful than a book agent, and was trying to promote a cream-colored
mustache and buff "Done-gals" on the side.
Suffice it to say that he was madly in love with Fanny Buttonhook, and
too bashful to say so by telephone.
Her name wasn't Buttonhook, but I will admit it for the sake of
argument. Harry lived over at Kalamazoo, we will say, and Fanny at
Oshkosh. These were not the exact names of the towns, but I desire to
bewilder the public, in order to avoid any harrassing disclosures in the
future. It is always well enough, I find, to deal gently with those who
are alive and moderately muscular.
Young Bevans was not specially afraid of old man Buttonhook, or his
wife. He didn't dread the enraged parent worth a cent. He wasn't afraid
of anybody under the cerulean dome, in fact, except Miss Buttonhook,
but when she sailed down the main street, Harry lowered his colors and
dodged into the first place he found open, whether it was a millinery
store or a livery stable.
Once, in an unguarded moment, he passed so near her that the gentle
south wind caught up the cherry ribbon that Miss Buttonhook wore at her
throat, and slapped Mr. Bevans across the cheek with it before he knew
what ailed him. There was a little vision of straw hat, brown hair,
and pink-and-white cuticle, as it were, a delicate odor of violets, the
"swish" of a summer silk, and my friend, Mr. Bevans, put his hand to his
head, like a man who has a sun-stroke, and fell into a drug store and a
state of wild mash, ruin and hopeless chaos.
His bashfulness was not seated nor chronic. It was the varioloid, and
didn't hurt him only when Miss Buttonhook was present, or in sight. He
was polite and chatty with other girls, and even dared to be blithe and
gay sometimes, too, but when Frances loomed up in the distance, he would
climb a rail fence nine feet high to evade her.
He told me once that he wished I would erect the frame-work of a
letter to Fanny, in which he desired to ask that he might open up a
correspondence with her.
He would copy and mail it, he said, and he was sure that I. being a
disinterested party, would be perfectly calm.
I wrote a letter for him of which I was moderately proud. It would melt
the point on a lightning rod, it seemed to me, for it was just as full
of gentleness and poetic soothe as it could be, and Tupper. Webster's
Dictionary and my scrap book had to give down first rate. Still it was
manly and square-toed. It was another man's confession, and I made it
bulge out with frankness and candor.
As luck would have it, I went over to Oshkosh about the time Harry's
prize epistle reached that metropolis, and having been a confidant of
Miss B.'s from early childhood. I had the pleasure of reading Bev's
letter, and advising the young lady about the correspondence.
Finally a bright thought struck her. She went over to an easy chair, and
sat down on her foot, coolly proposing that I should outline a letter
replying to Harry's, in a reserved and rather frigid manner, yet bidding
him dare to hope that if his orthography and punctuation continued
correct, he might write occasionally, though it must be considered
entirely _sub rosa_ and abnormally _entre-nous_ on account of "Pa."
By the way. "Pa" was a druggist, and one of the salts of the
earth--Epsom salts of course.
I agreed to write the letter, swore never to reveal the secret workings
of the order, the grips, explanations, passwords and signals, and then
wrote her a nice, demure, startled-fawn letter, as brief as the collar
to a party dress, and as solemn as the Declaration of Independence.
Then I said good-by, and returned to my own home, which was neither in
Kalamazoo nor Oshkosh. There I received a flat letter from William Henry
Bevans, inclosing one from Fanny, and asking for suggestions as to a
reply. Her letter was in Miss Buttonhook's best vein. I remember having
written it myself.
Well, to cut a long story short, every other week I wrote a letter for
Fanny, and on intervening weeks I wrote one for the lover at Kalamazoo.
By keeping copies of all letters written, I had a record showing where I
was, and avoided saying the same pleasant things twice.
Thus the short, sweet summer scooted past. The weeks were filled
with gladness, and their memory even now comes back to me, like a
wood-violet-scented vision. A wood-violet-scented vision comes high, but
it is necessary in this place.
Toward winter the correspondence grew a little tedious, owing to the
fact that I had a large and tropical boil on the back of my neck, which
refused to declare its intentions or come to a focus, for three weeks.
In looking over the letters of both lovers yesterday, I could tell by
the tone of each just where this boil began to grow up, as it were,
between two fond hearts.
This feeling grew till the middle of December, when there was a red-hot
quarrel. It was exciting and spirited, and after I had alternately
flattered myself first from Kalamazoo and then from Oshkosh, it was
a genuine luxury to have a row with myself through the medium of the
United States mails.
Then I made up and got reconciled. I thought it would be best to secure
harmony before the holidays, so that Harry could go over to Oshkosh and
spend Christmas. I therefore wrote a letter for Harry in which he said
he had, no doubt, been hasty, and he was sorry. It should not occur
again. The days had been like weary ages since their quarrel, he
said--vicariously, of course--and the light had been shut out of his
erstwhile joyous life. Death would be a luxury unless she forgave him,
and Hades would be one long, sweet picnic and lawn festival unless she
blessed him with her smile.
You can judge how an old newspaper reporter, with a scarlet imagination,
would naturally dash the color into another man's picture of humility
and woe.
She replied--by proxy--that he was not to blame. It was her waspish
temper and cruel thoughtlessness. She wished he would come over and take
dinner with them on Christmas day and she would tell him how sorry she
was. When the man admits that he's a brute and the woman says she's
sorry, it behooves the eagle eye of the casual spectator to look up into
the blue sky for a quarter of an hour, till the reconciliation has had
a chance and the brute has been given time to wipe a damp sob from his
coat-collar.
I was invited to the Christmas dinner. As a successful reversible
amanuensis I thought I deserved it. I was proud and happy. I had passed
through a lover's quarrel and sailed in with white-winged peace on time,
and now I reckoned that the second joint, with an irregular fragment
of cranberry jelly, and some of the dressing, and a little of the white
meat please, was nothing more than right.
Mr. Bevans forgot to be bashful twice during the day, and even smiled
once also. He began to get acquainted with Fanny after dinner, and
praised her beautiful letters. She blushed clear up under her "wave,"
and returned the compliment.
That was natural. When he praised her letters I did not wonder, and
when she praised his I admitted that she was eminently correct. I never
witnessed better taste on the part of two young and trusting hearts.
After Christmas I thought they would both feel like buying a manual and
doing their own writing, but they did not dare to do so evidently. They
seemed to be afraid the change would be detected, so I piloted them into
the middle of the succeeding fall, and then introduced the crisis into
both their lives.
It was a success.
I felt about as well as though I were to be cut down myself and married
off in the very prime of life. Fanny wore the usual clothing adopted
by young ladies who are about to be sacrificed to a great horrid man. I
cannot give the exact description of her trousseau, but she looked like
a hazel-eyed angel, with a freckle on the bridge of her nose. The
groom looked a little scared, and moved his gloved hands as though they
weighed twenty-one pounds apiece.
However, it's all over now. I was up there recently to see them. They
are quite happy. Not too happy, but just happy enough. They call their
oldest son Birdie. I wanted them to call him William, but they were
headstrong and named him Birdie. That wounded my pride, and so I called
him Earlie Birdie.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXVI--THE DAUGHTER OF BOB TAIL FLUSH.
_The Dusky Bride of Old Fly Up-the-Creek is a Lover of the
Beautiful--The Indian Maiden in-Her Wild Simplicity--How She Appears
to the Man of Sentiment--No Ruthless Hand Shall Tear the Cloak from the
True Indian Maiden._
|One of the attractions of life at the Cheyenne Indian agency, is the
reserved seat ticket to the regular slaughter-house matinee. The agency
butchers kill at the rate of ten bullocks per hour while at work, and so
great was the rush to the slaughter-pens for the internal economy of the
slaughtered animals, that Major Love found it necessary to erect a box
office and gate, where none but those holding tickets could enter and
provide themselves with these delicacies.
This is not a sensation, it is the plain truth, and we desire to call
the attention of those who love and admire the Indian at a distance of
2,000 miles, and to the æsthetic love for the beautiful which prompts
the crooked-fanged and dusky bride of old Fly-up-the-Creek
to rob the soap-grease man and the glue factory, that she may make a
Cheyenne holiday. As a matter of fact, common decency will not permit us
to enter into a discussion of this matter. Firstly, it would not be fit
for the high order of readers who peruse these pages, and secondly, the
Indian maiden at the present moment stands on a lofty crag of the
Rocky mountains, beautiful in her wild simplicity, wearing the fringed
garments of her tribe. To the sentimentalist she appears outlined
against the glorious sky of the new West, wearing a coronet of eagle's
feathers, and a health-corset trimmed with fantastic bead-work and
wonderful and impossible designs in savage art.
Shall we then rush in and with ruthless hand shatter this beautiful
picture? Shall we portray her as she appears on her return from the
great slaughter-house benefit and moral aggregation of digestive
mementos? Shall we draw a picture of her clothed in a horse-blanket,
with a necklace of the false teeth of the paleface, and her coarse,
unkempt hair hanging over her smoky features and clinging to her warty,
bony neck? No, no. Far be it from us to destroy the lovely vision of
copper-colored grace and smoke-tanned beauty, which the freckled student
of the effete East has erected in the rose-hued chambers of fancy. Let
her dwell there as the plump-limbed princess of a brave people. Let her
adorn the hat-rack of his imagination--proud, beautiful, grand, gloomy
and peculiar--while as a matter of fact, she is at that moment
leaving the vestibule of the slaughter-house, conveying in the soiled
laprobe--which is her sole adornment--the mangled lungs of a Texas
steer.
No man shall ever say that we have busted the beau-ful Cigar Sign Vision
that he has erected in his memory. Let the graceful Indian queen that
has lived on in his heart ever since he studied history and saw the
graphic picture of the landing of Columbus, in which Columbus is just
unsheathing his bread knife, and the stage Indians are fleeing to the
tall brush; let her, we say, still live on. The ruthless hand that
writes nothing but everlasting truth, and the stub pencil that yanks
the cloak of the false and artificial from cold and perhaps unpalatable
fact, will spare this little imaginary Indian maiden with a back-comb
and gold garters. Let her withstand the onward march of centuries, while
the true Indian maiden eats the fricasseed locust of the plains, and
wears the cavalry pants of progress. We may be rough and thoughtless
many times, but we cannot come forward and ruthlessly shatter the red
goddess at whose shrine the far-away student of Blackhawk, and other
fourth-reader warriors, worship.
As we said, we decline to pull the cloak from the true Indian maiden of
to-day and show her as she is. That cloak may be all she has on, and no
gentleman will be rude even to the daughter of Old Bob-Tail-Flush, the
Cheyenne brave.
LOAFING AROUND HOME.
|While other young men put on their seal-brown overalls and wrench
the laurel wreath and other vegetables from cruel fate, the youth who
dangles near the old nest, and eats the hard-earned groceries of his
father, shivers on the brink of life's great current and sheds the
scalding tear.
THE PLUMAGE OF THE OSTRICH.
|The ostrich is chiefly valuable for the plumage which he wears, and
which, when introduced into the world of commerce, makes the husband
almost wish that he were dead.
SOME EARNEST THOUGHTS.
|Young man, what are you living for? Have you an object dear to you as
life, and without the attainment of which you feel that your life will
have been a wide, shoreless waste of shadow, peopled by the specters
of dead ambitions? Is it your consuming ambition to paddle quietly but
firmly up the stream of time with manly strokes, against the current
of public opinion, or to linger along the seductive banks, going in
swimming, or, careless of the future, gathering shells and tadpoles
along the shore?
Have you a distinct idea of a certain position in life which you wish to
attain? Have you decided whether you will be a great man, and die in the
poor-house, and have a nice comfortable monument after you are dead, for
your destitute family to look at, or will you content yourself to plug
along through life as a bank president?
These, young men, are questions of moment. They are questions of two
moments. They come home to our hearts to-day with terrible earnestness.
You can take your choice in the great battle of life, whether you will
bristle up and win a deathless name, and owe almost everybody, or be
satisfied with scads and mediocrity.
Why do you linger and fritter away the heyday of life, when you might
skirmish around and win some laurels? Many of those who now stand at
the head of the nation as statesmen and logicians, were once unknown,
unhonored and unsung. Now they saw the air in the halls of Congress, and
their names are plastered on the temple of fame.
They were not born great. Some of them only weighed six pounds to start
with. But they have rustled. They have peeled their coats and made rome
howl.
You can do the same. You can win some laurels, too, if you will brace up
and secure them when they are ripe.
Daniel Webster and President Garfield and Dr. Tanner and George Eliot
were all, at one time, poor boys. They had to start at the foot of the
ladder and toil upward.
They struggled against poverty and public opinion bravely, till they
won a name in the annals of history, and secured to their loved ones
palatial homes with lightning rods and mortgages on them.
So may you, if you will make the effort. All these things are within
your reach. Live temperately on $9 per month. That's the way we got our
start. Burn the midnight oil if necessary. Get some true, noble-minded
young lady of your acquaintance to assist you. Tell her of your troubles
and she will tell you what to do. She will gladly advise you.
Then you can marry her, and she will advise you some more. After that
she will lay aside her work any time to advise you. You needn't be out
of advice at all unless you want to. She, too, will tell you when you
have made a mistake. She will come to you frankly and acknowledge that
you have make a jackass of yourself.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXVII--OUR GREAT NATIONAL MOTTO.
_Billy Root Has an Enquiring Mind--Mr. Root Delighted with His Son's
Ambition--A new Translation of Our National Motto._
|When Billy Root was a little boy he was of a philosophical and
investigating turn of mind, and wanted to know almost everything. He
also desired to know it immediately. He could not wait for time to
develop his intellect, but he crowded things and wore out the patience
of his father, a learned savant, who was president of a livery stable in
Chicago.
One day Billy ran across the grand hailing sign, which is generally
represented as a tape-worm in the beak of the American eagle, on which
is inscribed "E Pluribus Unum." Billy, of course, asked his father what
"E Pluribus Unum" meant. He wanted to gather in all the knowledge he
could, so that when he came out West he could associate with some of our
best men.
"I admire your strong appetite for knowledge, Billy," said Mr. Root;
"you have a morbid craving for cold hunks of ancient history and
cyclopedia that does my soul good; I am glad, too, that you write to
your father to get accurate data for your collection. That is right.
Your father will always lay aside his work at any time and gorge your
young mind with knowledge that will be as useful to you as a farrow cow.
'E Pluribus Unum' is an old Greek inscription that has been handed down
from generation to generation, preserved in brine, and signifies that
'the tail goes with the hide.'"
A GRAVE QUESTION.
|What becomes of our bodies?" asks a soft-eyed scientist, and we answer
in stentorian tones, that they get inside of a red flannel undershirt as
the maple turns to crimson and the sassafras to gold. Ask us something
difficult, ethereal being.
THOUGHTS.
|It seems that quince seeds are now largely used by the girls in
convincing their bangs to stay bung. That is, the quince seed is
manufactured into a mucilage that holds a little flat curl in place a
week. In consequence of this, quince seeds have increased in price and
decreased in quantity till the girls pay seven prices for them or go
without.
If they would adopt our style of bang, much trouble and expense would
be avoided. We bang our hair with a damp towel, and it don't bother
us again for two weeks. Being the proprietor, in the first place, of a
style of hair of the delicate color peculiar to a streak of moonlight,
it didn't at any time make much difference whether we did it up in tin
foil every night or not, and now that cares like a wild deluge have come
upon us thick and fast, we have enlarged our intellectual skating rink
and we find, with unalloyed pleasure, that the time we once devoted
to parting our pale, consumptive tresses can be entirely devoted to
excessive mental effort, and pleasant memories of a well spent life.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XVIII--BILL NYE AT A TOURNAMENT.
_A Tournament with Gloves--Dumb-bells--Horizontal Bars--Analysis of the
Boxing-glove--A Clerical Error--My Young Brother's Beauty Preserved._
I have just returned from a little two-handed tournament with the
gloves. I have filled my nose with cotton waste so that I shall not soak
this sketch in gore as I write.
I needed a little healthful exercise and was looking for something that
would be full of vigorous enthusiasm, and at the same time promote the
healthful flow of blood to the muscles. This was rather difficult.
I tried most everything, but failed. Being a sociable being (joke)
I wanted other people to help me exercise or go along with me when
I exercised. Some men can go away to a desert isle and have fun with
dumb-bells and a horizontal bar, but to me it would seem dull and
commonplace after a while, and I would yearn for more humanity.
Two of us finally concluded to play billiards; but we were only amateurs
and the owner intimated that he would want the table for Fourth of July,
so we broke off in the middle of the first game and I paid for it.
Then a younger brother said he had a set of boxing-gloves in his room,
and although I was the taller and had longer arms, he would hold up as
long as he could, and I might hammer him until I gained strength and
finally got well.
I accepted this offer because I had often regretted that I had not made
myself familiar with this art, and also because I knew it would create
a thrill of interest and fire me with ambition, and that's what a
holloweyed invalid needs to put him on the road to recovery.
The boxing-glove is a large fat mitten, with an abnormal thumb and a
string at the wrist by which you tie it on, so that when you feed it to
your adversary he cannot swallow it and choke himself. I had never
seen any boxing-gloves before, but my brother said they were soft and
wouldn't hurt anybody. So we took off some of our raiment and put them
on. Then we shook hands. I can remember distinctly yet that we shook
hands. That was to show that we were friendly and would not slay each
other.
My brother is a great deal younger than I am and so I warned him not to
get excited and come for me with anything that would look like wild and
ungovernable fury, because I might, in the heat of debate, pile his jaw
upon his forehead and fill his ear full of sore thumb. He said that was
all right and he would try to be cool and collected.
Then we put our right toes together and I told him to be on his guard.
At that moment I dealt him a terrific blow aimed at his nose, but
through a clerical error of mine it went over his shoulder and spent
itself in the wall of the room, shattering a small holly-wood bracket,
for which I paid him $3.75 afterward. I did not wish to buy the bracket
because I had two at home, but he was arbitrary about it and I bought
it.
We then took another athletic posture, and in two seconds the air was
full of poulticed thumb and buckskin mitten. I soon detected a chance
to put one in where my brother could smell of it, but I never knew just
where it struck, for at that moment I ran up against something with
the pit of my stomach that made me throw up the sponge, along with some
other groceries, the names of which I cannot now recall.
My brother then proposed that we take off the gloves, but I thought I
had not sufficiently punished him, and that another round would complete
the conquest, which was then almost within my grasp. I took a bismuth
powder and squared myself, but in warding off a left-hander, I forgot
about my adversary's right, and ran my nose into the middle of his
boxing-glove. Fearing that I had injured him, I retreated rapidly on my
elbows and shoulder-blades to the corner of the room, thus giving him
ample time to recover. By this means my younger brother's features were
saved, and are to-day as symmetrical as my own.
I can still cough up pieces of boxing-gloves, and when I close my eyes
I can see calcium lights and blue phosphorescent gleams across the
horizon; but I am thoroughly convinced that there is no physical
exercise which yields the same amount of health and elastic vigor to
the puncher that the manly art does. To the punchee, also, it affords a
large wad of glad surprises and nose bleed, which cannot be hurtful to
those who hanker for the pleasing nervous shock, the spinal jar, and the
pyrotechnic concussion.
That is why I shall continue the exercises after I have practiced with
a mule or a cow-catcher two or three weeks, and feel a little more
confidence in myself.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXIX--A SOCIAL CURSE--THE MAN WHO INTERRUPTS.
_The Spirit of the "Red Vigilanter"--The Common Plug Who Thinks
Aloud--The Man and his Wife Who Finish Your Story--Common Decency Ought
to Rule Conversation._
|I do not, as a rule, thirst for the blood of my fellow-man. I am
willing that the law should in all ordinary cases take its course, but
when we begin to discuss the man who breaks into a conversation and
ruins it with his own irrelevant ideas, regardless of the feelings
of humanity, I am not a law and order man. The spirit of the "Red
Vigilanter" is roused in my breast and I hunger for the blood of that
man.
Interrupters are of two classes: First the common plug who thinks aloud,
and whose conversation wanders with his so-called mind. He breaks into
the saddest and sweetest of sentiment, and the choicest and most tearful
of pathos, with the remorseless ignorance that marks a stump-tail cow in
a dahlia bed. He is the bull in my china shop, the wormwood in my wine,
and the kerosene in my maple syrup. I am shy in conversation, and my
unfettered flights of poesy and sentiment are rare, but this man is
always near to mar it all with a remark, or a marginal note, or a story,
or a bit of politics, ready to bust my beautiful dream and make me wish
that his name might be carved on a marble slab in some quiet cemetery,
far away.
Dear reader, did you ever meet this man--or his wife? Did you ever
strike some beautiful thought and begin to reel if off to your friends,
only to be shut off in the middle of a sentence by this choice and
banner idiot of conversation? If so, come and sit by me, and you may
pour your woes into my ear, and I in turn will pour a few gallons into
your listening ear.
I do not care to talk more than my share of the time, but I would be
glad to arrive at a conclusion just to see how it would seem. I would be
so pleased and so joyous to follow up an anecdote till I had reached the
"nub," as it were, to chase argument home to conviction, and to clinch
assertion with authority and evidence.
The second class of interrupters is even worse. It consists of the
man--and, lam pained to state, his wife also--who see the general drift
of your remarks and finish out your story, your gem of thought or
your argument. It is very seldom that they do this as you would do it
yourself, but they are kind and thoughtful and their services are always
at hand. No matter how busy they may be, they will leave their own work
and fly to your aid. With the light of sympathy in their eyes, they rush
into the conversation, and, partaking of your own zeal, they take the
words from your mouth, and cheerfully suck the juice out of your joke,
handing back the rind and hoping for reward. That is where they get
left, so far as I am concerned. I am almost always ready to repay
rudeness with rudeness, and cold preserved gall with such acrid sarcasm
as I may be able to secure at the moment. No one will ever know how I
yearn for the blood of the interrupter. At night I camp on his trail,
and all the day I thirst for his warm life's current. In my dreams I am
cutting his scalp loose with a case-knife, while my fingers are twined
in his clustering hair. I walk over him and promenade across his abdomen
as I slumber. I hear his ribs crack, and I see his tongue hand over his
shoulder as he smiles death's mirthful smile.
I do not interrupt a man no more than I would tell him he lied. I give
him a chance to win applause or decomposed eggs from the audience,
according to what he has to say, and according to the profundity of
his profound. All I want is a similar chance and room according to my
strength. Common decency ought to govern conversation without its being
necessary to hire an umpire armed with a four-foot club, to announce who
is at the bat and who is on deck.
It is only once in a week or two that the angel troubles the waters and
stirs up the depths of my conversational powers, and then the chances
are that some leprous old nasty toad who has been hanging on the brink
of decent society for two weeks, slides in with a low kerplunk, and my
fair blossom of thought that has been trying for weeks to bloom,
withers and goes to seed, while the man with the chilled steel and
copper-riveted brow, and a wad of self-esteem on his intellectual
balcony as big as an inkstand, walks slowly away to think of some other
dazzling gem, and thus be ready to bust my beautiful phantom, and tear
out my high-priced bulbs of fancy the next time I open my mouth.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXX--A DISCOURSE ON CATS.
_Anybody Ought to Be Unhappy Enough Without a Cat-A Tramp Cat--he
Only Wanted to be Loved a Little--He Was Too Much Given to
Investigation--Mademoiselle Bridget O'Dooley--The Plaintive Voice
Ceases._
|I am not fond of cats, as a general rule. I never yearned to have one
around the house. My idea always was, that I could have trouble enough
in a legitimate way without adding a cat to my woes. With a belligerent
cook and a communistic laundress, it seems to me most anybody ought to
be unhappy enough without a cat.
I never owned one until a tramp cat came to our house one day during the
present autumn, and tearfully asked to be loved. He didn't have anything
in his make-up that was calculated to win anybody's love, but he seemed
contented with a little affection,--one ear was gone, and his tail was
bald for six inches at the end, and he was otherwise well calculated to
win confidence and sympathy. Though we could not be madly in love with
him, we decided to be friends, and give him a chance to win the general
respect.
Everything would have turned out all right if the bobtail waif had not
been a little given to investigation. He wanted to know more about the
great world in which he lived, so he began by inspecting my house. He
got into the store-room closet, and found a place where the carpenter
had not completed his job. This is a feature of the Laramie artisan's
style. He leaves little places in unobserved corners generally, so that
he can come back some day and finish it at an additional cost of fifty
dollars. This cat observed that he could enter at this point and go all
over the imposing structure between the flooring and the ceiling. He
proceeded to do so.
*****
We will now suppose that a period of two days has passed. The wide halls
and spacious _facades_ of the Nye mansion are still. The lights in the
banquet-hall are extinguished, and the ice-cream freezer is hushed to
rest in the wood-shed. A soft and tearful yowl, deepened into a regular
ring-tail-peeler, splits the solemn night in twain. Nobody seemed to
know where it came from. I rose softly and went to where the sound had
seemed to well up from. It was not there.
I stood on a piece of cracker in the dining-room a moment, waiting
for it to come again. This time it came from the boudoir of our French
artist in soup-bone symphonies and pie--Mademoiselle Bridget O'Dooley. I
went there and opened the door softly, so as to let the cat out without
disturbing the giant mind that had worn itself out during the day in the
kitchen, bestowing a dry shampoo to the china.
Then I changed my mind and came out. Several articles of _vertu_, beside
Bridget, followed me with some degree of vigor.
The next time the tramp cat yowled he seemed to be in the recesses of
the bath-room. I went down stairs and investigated. In doing so I
drove my superior toe into my foot, out of sight, with a door that I
encountered. My wife joined me in the search. She could not do much, but
she aided me a thousand times by her counsel. If it had not been for
her mature advice I might have lost much of the invigorating exercise of
that memorable night.
Toward morning we discovered that the cat was between the floor of the
children's play-room and the ceiling of the dining-room. We tried till
daylight to persuade the cat to come out and get acquainted, but he
would not.
At last we decided that the quickest way to get the poor little thing
out was to let him die in there, and then we could tear up that portion
of the house and get him out. While he lived we couldn't keep him still
long enough to tear a hole in the house and get at him.
It was a little unpleasant for a day or two waiting for death to come
to his relief, for he seemed to die hard, but at last the unearthly
midnight yowl was still. The plaintive little voice ceased to vibrate on
the still and pulseless air. Later, we found, however, that he was not
dead. In a lucid interval he had discovered the hole in the store-room
where he entered, and, as we found afterward a gallon of coal-oil
spilled in a barrel of cut-loaf sugar, we concluded that he had escaped
by that route.
That was the only time that I ever kept a cat, and I didn't do it then
because I was suffering for something to fondle. I've got a good deal
of surplus affection, I know, but I don't have to spread it out over a
stump-tail orphan cat.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXI--THE GREAT ORATION OF SPARTACUS.
_Adapted from the Original--Triumph in Capua--The Oration
Begun--Spartacus Tells the Story of His Life--Scenes in the Arena._
|It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus returning with
victorious eagles, had aroused the populace with the sports of the
amphitheater, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city.
A large number of people from the rural districts had been in town to
watch the conflict in the arena, and to listen with awe and veneration
to the infirm and decrepit ring jokes.
The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from
the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor were
extinguished. The moon piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the
dark waters of the Tiber with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed
Roman soldier moved on his homeward way, the sidewalk occasionally
flying up and hitting him in the back.
No sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring wave, as it
told its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach, or the unrelenting
boot-jack struck the high board fence in the back yard, just missing the
Roman Tom cat in its mad flight, and then all was still as the breast
when the spirit has departed. Anon the Roman snore would steal in
upon the deathly silence, and then die away like the sough of a
summer breeze. In the green-room of the amphitheater a little band of
gladiators were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their
lips, the scowl of battle yet hang upon their brows, and the large knobs
on their classic profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with
them.
There was an embarassing silence of about five minutes, when Spartacus,
borrowing a chew of tobacco from Aurelius, stepped forth and thus
addressed them:
"Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Ye call me chief, and ye do well
to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the arena every
shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and
yet has never lowered his arm. I do not say this to brag, however, but
simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.
"If there be one among you who can say that ever in public fight or
private brawl my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth and say
it, and I will spread him around over the arena till the coroner will
have to gather him up with blotting paper. If there be three in all
your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and I will
construct upon their physiogomy such cupolas, and royal cornices, and
Corinthian capitols, and entablatures, that their own mothers would pass
them by in the broad light of high noon, unrecognized.
"And yet I was not always thus--a hired butcher--the savage chief of
still more savage men.
"My ancestors came from old Sparta, the county seat of Marcus Aurelius
county, and settled among the vine-clad hills and cotton groves of
Syrsilla. My early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which I sported.
Aside from the gentle patter of the maternal slipper on my overalls,
everything moved along with me like the silent oleaginous flow of the
ordinary goose grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We
stole the Roman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Roman
dog, and life was one continuous hallelujah.
"When at noon I led the sheep beneath the shade and played the Sweet
Bye-and-Bye on my shepherd's flute, there was another Spartan youth, the
son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to
the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of our
indestructible sandwiches.
"One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral and
we were all seated beneath the persimmon tree that shaded our humble
cottage, my grand-sire, an old man, was telling of Marathon, and
Leuctra, and George Francis Train, and Dr. Mary Walker and other
great men, and how a little band of Spartans, under Sitting Bull, had
withstood the entire regular army. I did not then know what war was, but
my cheek burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it
would be to leave the reservation and go on the warpath. But my mother
kissed my throbbing temples and bade me go soak my head and think no
more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans
landed on our coasts. They pillaged the whole country, burned the agency
buildings, demolished the ranch, rode off the stock, tore down the
smoke-house, and rode their war horses over the cucumber vines.
"To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet-clasps
and looked upon him, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was
on his face that I had known when in adventurous boyhood we bathed in
the glassy lake by our Spartan home and he had tied my shirt into 1,752
dangerous and difficult knots.
"He knew me, smiled some more, said 'Ta, ta,' and ascended the golden
stair. I begged of the Prætor that I might be allowed to bear away the
body and have it packed in ice and shipped to his friends near Syrsilla,
but he couldn't see it.
"Ay, upon my bended knees, amidst the dust and blood of the arena, I
begged this poor boon, and the Prætor answered: 'Let the carrion rot.
There are no noble men but Romans and Ohio men. Let the show go on.
Bring in the bobtail lion from Abyssinia.' And the assembled maids and
matrons and the rabble shouted in derision and told me to 'brace up'
and 'have some style about my clothes' and 'to give it to us easy,' with
other Roman flings which I do not now call to mind.
"And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs.
"To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome, and reserved
seats are being sold at the corner of Third and Corse streets for our
moral and instructive performance while I am speaking to you.
"Ye stand here like giants as ye are, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis
with a sealskin cap will pat your red brawn and bet his sesterces upon
your blood.
"O Rome! Rome! Thou hast been indeed a tender nurse to me. Thou hast
given to that gentle, timid shepherd lad who never knew a harsher tone
than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart like the adamantine
lemon pie of the railroad lunch-room. Thou hast taught him to drive his
sword-through plated mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the
palpitating gizzard of his foe, and to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of
the fierce Numidian lion even as the smooth-cheeked Roman Senator looks
into the laughing eyes of the girls in the treasury department.
"And he shall pay thee back till thy rushing Tiber is red as frothing
wine; and in its deepest ooze thy lifeblood lies curdled. You doubtless
hear the gentle murmur of my bazoo.
"Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he
tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don't
you forget it; and he will fling your vertebræ about his cage like the
star pitcher of a champion nine.
"If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the
butcher's knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me. Strike down the
warden and the turnkey, overpower the police, and cut for the tall
timber. We will break through the city gate, capture the war-horse of
the drunken Roman, flee away to the lava beds, and there do bloody work,
as did our sires at old Thermopylae, scalp the western-bound emigrant,
and make the hen-roosts around Capua look sick.
"O, comrades! warriors! gladiators!!
"If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, and by the
still waters, and be buried according to Gunter, instead of having our
shin bones polished off by Numidian lions, amid the groans and hisses of
a snide Roman populace."
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>--WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE IN WYOMING.
_Some Pertinent Questions Asked--Answers Attempted--Valuable
Testimonials._
|The managing editor of a Boston paper is getting material together
relative to the practical workings of Woman's suffrage, and as Wyoming
is at present working a scheme of that kind, he wants an answer to the
following questions:
1. --Has it been of real benefit to the territory?
2. --If so, what has it accomplished?
3. --how does it affect education, morals, courts, etc.?
4. --What proportion of the women vote?
_Answers_.
1. --Yes, it has indeed been of real benefit to the territory in
many ways. Until woman's suffrage came among us, life was a drag--a
monotonous sameness, and simultaneous continuousness. How it is not that
way. Woman comes forward with her ballot, and puts new life into the
flagging energies of the great political circles. She purifies the
political atmosphere, and comes to the polls with her suffrage done
up in a little wad, and rammed down into her glove, and redeems the
country.
2. --It has accomplished more than the great outside world wots of.
Philosophers and statesmen may think that they wot; but they don't. Not
a wot.
To others outside of Wyoming, woman's suffrage is a mellow dream; but
here it is a continuous, mellow, yielding reality. We know what we are
talking about. We are acquainted with a lady who came here with the
light of immortality shining in her eye, and the music of the spheres
was singing in her ears. She was apparently on her last limbs, if we
may be allowed that expression. But woman's suffrage came to her with
healing on its wings, and the rose of health again bloomed on her cheek,
and her appetite came back like the famine in Ireland. Now she wrestles
with the cast-iron majolica ware of the kitchen during the day, and
in the evening works a cross-eyed elephant on a burlap tidy, and talks
about the remonetization of the currency.
Without attempting to answer the last two questions in a short article
like this, we will simply give a few certificates and testimonials of
those who have tried it:
Prairie-Dog Ranche, Jan. 3, 1888.
"_Dear Sir_: I take great pleasure in bearing testimony to the efficacy
of woman's suffrage. It is indeed a boon to thousands. I was troubled
in the East beyond measure with an ingrowing nail on the most extensive
toe. It caused me great pain and annoyance. I was compelled to do my
work wearing an old gum overshoe of my husband's. Since using woman's
suffrage only a few months, my toe is entirely well, and I now wear my
husband's fine boots with perfect ease. As a remedy for ingrowing nails
I can safely recommend the woman's suffrage.
"Sassafras Oleson."
Miner's Delight, Jan. 23, 1888.
"_Deer Sur_: Two year ago mi waife fell down into a nold sellar and
droav her varyloid through the Sarah helium. I thot she was a Gonner.
I woz then livin' in the sou west potion of Injeanny. I moved to where
i now am leaving sevral onsettled accounts where i lived. Bat i wood do
almost anything to recover mi waifs helth. She tried Woman's Suffrins
and can now lick me with I hand tied behind hur back, everything to the
free yuse of the femail ballot. So good bi at Present Union Forever
McGilligin."
Rawhide, Feb. 2, 1888.
_Dear Sir_: I came to Wyoming one year ago today At that time I only
weighed 153 pounds and felt all the time as though I might die. I was a
walking skeleton. Coyotes followed me when I went away from the house.
"My husband told me to try Woman's Suffrage. I did so. I have now run up
to my old weight of 213 pounds, and I feel that with the proper care and
rest, and rich wholesome diet, I may be spared to my husband and family
till next spring.
"I am now joyful and happy. I go about my work all day singing Old Zip
Coon and other plaintive melodies. After using Woman's Suffrage two days
I sat up in a rocking chair and ate one and three-fourths mince pies.
Then I worried down a sugar-cured ham and have been gaining ever since.
"Ah! it is a pleasant thing to come back to life and its joys again.
"Yours truly,
"Ethel Lillian Kersikes."
PIGEON-TOED PETE.
|But stay! Let us catch a rapid outline of the solitary horseman, for he
is the affianced lover and soft-eyed gazelle of Luella Frowzletop,
the queen of the Skimmilk ranch. He is evidently a man of say twenty
summers, with a sinister expression to the large, ambitious, imported,
Italian mouth. A broad-brimmed white hat with a scarlet flannel band
protects his gothic features from the burning sun, and a pale-brown
ducking suit envelops his little form. A horsehair lariat hangs at his
saddle bow, and the faint suspicion of a downy mustache on his chiselled
upper lip is just beginning to ooze out into the air, as if ashamed of
itself. It is one of those sickly mustaches, a kind of cross between
blonde and brindle, which mean well enough, but never amount to
anything. His eyes are fierce and restless, with short, expressive,
white eyelashes, and his nose is short but wide out, gradually melting
away into his bronzed and stalwart cheeks, like a dish of ice cream
before a Sabbath school picnic. Such is the rough sketch of Pigeon-toed
Pete, the swain who had stolen away the heart of Luella Frowzletop, the
queen of the Skimmilk ranch.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>--CONCERNING THE SWALLOW.
_Discoveries in Ornithology--The Soft South Wind Blows--The Swallows
Draw Near--"When Sparrows Build "--What the Swallows Bring._
|Lately I have made some valuable discoveries relative to ornithology,
and I will give some of them to the public, for I love to shed
information right and left like a normal school.
When the soft south wind began to kiss our cheeks, and the horse-radish
and North Park prospector began to start, the swift-winged swallows drew
near to my picturesque home on East Fifth street, and I hoped with a
great, anxious, throbbing hope, that they would build beneath the Gothic
eaves of my $200 ranche.
I would take my guitar at the sunset hour, and sit at my door in a
camp-chair, with the fading glory of the dying day bathing me in a flood
of golden light, and touching up my chubby form, and I would warble,
"When Sparrows Build," an old solo in J, which seems to fit my voice,
and the swallows would flit around me on tireless wing, and squeak, and
sling mud over me till the cows came home.
This thing had gone on for several days, and the little mud houses
under the eaves were pretty near ready, and in the mean time the
spring bed-bug had come with his fragrant breath, and turpentine, and
quicksilver, and lime, and aquafortis, and giant-powder, and a feather,
has made my home a howling wilderness, that smelled like a city drug
store.
But it didn't kill the bugs. It pleased them. They called a meeting and
tendered me a vote of thanks for the kind attentions with which they had
been received. They ate all these diabolical drugs, not only on regular
days, but right along through Lent.
I got mad and resolved to Insure the house and burn it down. One evening
I felt sad and worn, and was trying to solace myself by trilling a
few snatches from Mendelssohn's "Wail," written in the key of G for a
baritone voice. A neighbor came along and stopped to lean over the gate,
and drink in the flood of melody which I was spilling out on the evening
air. When I got through and stopped to tune my guitar anew, and scratch
a warm place on my arm, he asked if I were not afraid that those
swallows would bring bed-bugs to the house.
I had heard that before, but I thought it was a campaign lie. I acted
on the suggestion, however, and taking a long pole from behind the door,
where I keep it for pictorial Bible men, I knocked down a 'dobe cottage
and proceeded to examine it.
It was level full of imported Merino and Cotswold and Southdown and
Early Bose and Duchess of Oldenburg and twenty-ounce Pippins and
Seek-no-further bedbugs. There were bed-bugs in modest gray ulsters and
bed-bugs in dregs of wine and old gold, bed-bugs in ashes of roses and
bed-bugs in elephants' breath, bedbugs with their night-clothes on and
in morning wrappers, bed-bugs that were just going on the night-shift,
and bed-bugs that had been at work all day and were just going to bed.
I killed all I could and then drove the rest into a pan of coal oil.
When one undertook to get out of the pan I shot him. This conflict
lasted several days. I neglected my other business and omitted morning
prayers until there was a great calm and the swift-winged swallows
homeward flew. When these feathered songsters come around my humble cot
another spring they will meet with a cold, unwelcome reception. I shall
not even ask them to take off their things.
I have formed the idea somehow from watching the eccentric, nervous
flight of the swallow, that when he makes one of those swift flank
movements with the speed of chain lightning, he must be acting from the
impulse of a large, earnest, triangular bed-bug of the boarding-house
variety. I may be wrong, but I have given this matter a good deal of
attention, and whether this theory be correct or not I do not care. It
is good enough for me.
THE HAPPY CODFISH.
|A distinguished scientist informs us that "the cod subsists largely
on the sea cherry." Those who have not had the pleasure of seeing the
codfish climb the sea cherry tree in search of food, or clubbing the
fruit from the heavily-laden branches with chunks of coral have missed
a very fine sight. The codfish, when at home rambling through the
submarine forests, does not wear his vest unbuttoned, as he does while
loafing around the grocery stores of the United States.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXIV--A NOVEL WAY OF MARKING CLOTHES.
_An Unobtrusive Taciturn Man--The Importance of Marking Clothes--A Sad
End for the Taciturn Alan--A Crude Autopsy._
|The most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel, "was
a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon
river. He was also reserved and taciturn among the miners, and never
made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most
thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew.
"I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told
him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some
trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he
asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my
clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a
female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed.
"He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he
would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three
shots through the valise.
[Illustration: 0201]
"After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship
that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked
a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them
on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they
had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days, they thought the
most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then
send the brain to New York in a baking powder can.
"So they hung him one night to the bough of a sighing mountain pine.
"The autopsy was, of course, crude; but they sawed open his head and
scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to
New York. By some mistake or other it got mixed up with some sample
specimens of ore from 'The Brindle Tom Cat' discovery, and was sent to
the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner, as
was intended.
"The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved
letter to the boys, saying that he was an old man anyway, and he wished
they would consider his gray hairs and not try to palm off their old
groceries on him. He might have made errors in his assays, perhaps--all
men were more or less liable to mistakes--but he flattered himself that
he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can
of decomposed lobster salad, even if it was in a baking-powder can. He
hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense any more, but
use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old
and began to totter down toward the silent tomb.
"This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty, whether he was O.
K. in the upper story, or not."
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXV--THE UNHAPPY HUMORIST.
_A Blasted Life--Regarded as a Professional--No Jog in Being "The Life
of the Party"--Parents Should Discourage the First Signs of Humor in
Their Children._
|You are an youmorist, are you not?" queried a long-billed pelican
addressing a thoughtful, mental athlete, on the Milwaukee & St. Paul
road the other day.
"Yes, sir," said the sorrowful man, brushing away a tear. "I am an
youmorist. I am not very much so, but still I can see that I am drifting
that way. And yet I was once joyous and happy as you are. Only a few
years ago, before I was exposed to this malady, I was as blithe as a
speckled yearling, and recked not of aught--nor anything else, either.
Now my whole life is blasted. I do not dare to eat pie or preserves,
and no one tells funny stories when I am near They regard me as a
professional, and when I get in sight the 'scrub nine' close up and wait
for me to entertain the crowd and waddle around the ring."
"What do you mean by that?" murmured the pur-pie-nosed interrogation
point.
"Mean? Why, I mean that whether I'm drawing a salary or not, I'm
expected to be the 'life of the party.' I don't want to be the life of
the party I want to let some one else be the life of the party. I want
to get up the reputation of being as cross as a bear with a sore head.
I want people to watch their children for fear I'll swallow them. I want
to take my low-cut-evening-dress smile and put it in the bureau drawer,
and tell the world I've got a cancer in my stomach, and the heaves and
hypochondria, and a malignant case of leprosy."
"Do you mean to say that you do not feel facetious all the time, and
that you get weary of being an youmorist?"
"Yes, hungry interlocutor. Yes, low-browed student, yes. I am not
always tickled. Did you ever have a large, angry, and abnormally
protuberent boil somewhere on your person where it seemed to be in the
way? Did you ever have such a boil as a traveling companion, and then
get introduced to people as an youmorist? You have not? Well, then, you
do not know all there is of suffering in this sorrow-streaked world.
When wealthy people die why don't they endow a cast-iron castle with a
draw-bridge to it and call it the youmorists' retreat? Why don't they do
some good with their money instead of fooling it away on those who are
comparatively happy?"
"But how did you come to git to be an youmorist?"
"Well, I don't know. I blame my parents some. They might have prevented
it if they'd taken it in time, but they didn't. They let it run on till
it got established, and now it's no use to go to the Hot Springs or to
the mountains, or have an operation performed. You let a man get the
name of being an youmorist and he doesn't dare to register at the
hotels, and he has to travel anonymously, and mark his clothes with his
wife's name, or the public will lynch him if he doesn't say something
youmorist.
"Where is your boy to-night?" continued the gloomy humorist. "Do you
know where he is? Is he at home under your watchful eye, or is he away
somewhere jailing the handles on his first little joke? Parent, beware.
Teach your boy to beware. Watch him night and day, or all at once,
when he is beyond your jurisdiction, he will grow pale. He will have a
far-away look in his eye, and the bright, rosy lad will have become the
flat-chested, joyless youmorist.
"It's hard to speak unkindly of our parents, but mingled with my own
remorse I shall always murmur to myself, and ask over and over, why did
not my parents rescue me while they could? Why did they allow my chubby
little feet to waddle down to the dangerous ground on which the sad-eyed
youmorist must forever stand?
"Partner, do not forget what I have said to-day. Whether your child be
a son or daughter, it matters not. Discourage the first sign of
approaching humor. It is easier to bust the backbone of the first little
tender jokelet that sticks its head through the virgin soil, than it is
to allow the slimy folds of your son's youmorous lecture to be wrapped
about you, and to bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave."
LARAMIE'S HANDKERCHIEF.
|Laramie has the champion mean man. He has a Sunday handkerchief made
to order with scarlet spots on it, which he sticks up to his nose just
before the plate starts round, and leaves the church like a house on
fire.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXVI--THE SODA LAKES OF WYOMING.
_The Lakes near Sheep Mountain--Three Tons of Soda at the Centennial--A
Yield of 104,544 Tons of Soda per Annum--Should Provide an Income of
$1,062,864,000 per Annum._
|Some days ago, in company with several other eminent men of this place,
I paid a visit to the soda lakes of Wyoming, and will give a short,
truthful and concise description of their general appearance.
The lake or soda beds are situated about twelve miles southwest of
Laramie, in a direct line according to official survey, but the road
makes a slight variation from a direct line and therefore makes the
distance about fourteen miles.
In a kind of basin toward Sheep Mountain, the finest of a series of
hills intervening between the broad Laramie Plains and the Snowy Range,
lie these lakes, four in number, with no outlet whatever.
Just as you get plumb discouraged and have ceased to look for the lakes,
they all at once lie at your feet in all their glistening, dazzling,
snowy whiteness.
One of these lakes, to all appearances, is the source of water
supply for the balance, and from the exterior the water is constantly
crystallizing in the sun and forming a thick crust of sulphate of soda.
When we went out, it was one of those dry, clear, bracing days in the
month of July, in Wyoming, when the crisp air fans your cheek and fills
every vein, artery and capillary and pore with a glad exhilarating sense
that you are freezing to death.
Well, the day we went out to the lakes it was that way only not so much
so.
It was not, therefore, difficult to imagine the broad, white crust over
those lakes to be ice and snow. They are of the purest snowy white, and
when cut into, the crust has that deep sea blue of ice when cut in like
manner.
This crust of sulphate of soda is nearly three feet in depth and is
perfectly firm, so that the heaviest loads drive over it with safety.
The water which oozes up through the crust at intervals is quite warm,
being at the surface on a cool day about blood temperature, and of
course at a considerable depth much higher.
In 1876--the year which the gentle reader will call to mind as the
centennial--a slight fragment of this lode, weighing over three tons,
was cut in the form of a cube and sent to the Centennial, where it
attracted very much attention.
Six weeks afterward the unsightly hole in the deposit at the lake was
entirely filled up with a new formation.
This goes to show how inexhaustible is the mighty reservoir, and
the gentle reader may give it his earnest thought as a mathematical
question, what amount of this formation might be secured to the
enterprising manufacturer who might see fit to purchase and develop it.
Suppose there are sixty-four tons to every 400 superficial feet, and
suppose there are four lakes averaging forty acres, which is a low
estimate, then we have at present on hand 17,424 tons, with a capacity
to reproduce itself every two months, we will say, or at the rate of
104,544 tons per annum.
Suppose, then, we take a ten years' working test of the lakes, and we
have 1,002,864 tons of soda.
This soda is not adulterated with alum or other injurious substances,
and would therefore sell very rapidly.
It might be put in half-pound and pound cans which would sell at, we
will say, twenty-five and fifty cents per can.
Taking the very low estimate made above, as a basis we have the neat
little income of $1,062,864,000.
This is more than I am now clearing, I find, over and above expenses,
and I am thinking seriously of opening up this vast avenue to wealth
myself.
I would have done so long ere this, were it not that I am now developing
the Boomerang mine.
This mine is named after my favorite mule, and I am very anxious that it
should succeed.
I have already sunk $10 in this mine, and I cannot therefore abandon it,
as the casual observer will notice, without great loss to me.
THE COSTLY WATERMELON.
|Once a bonanza man took out his check book and asked the market man how
much he wanted for meat, and when he was told he burst into tears, and
said he would have to deny himself the pleasure of a watermelon or put
off going to Europe till next year.
<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXVII--VIEWS OF CHICAGO.
_Chicago the Rival of Laramie--The Wonderful Parks--A Chicago Funeral
Procession--In Search of Watermelons--Changes Amongst Old Friends--The
Vitality Restoring Revolver._
Chicago, June 20, 1887.
|I arrived here from the North on Tuesday evening. The demonstration
was on a larger scale than I had even looked for. It was
gratifying, indeed, to one who loves the spontaneous approval of his
fellow-citizens. I do. The procession was very fine, consisting of
'busses, hacks, carriages, express wagons and the police, followed up
by promiscuous citizens. There was a little misunderstanding about who
should deliver the address of welcome. So about two hundred healthy
orators, of the Denis Kearney decoction, all started in at one and the
same time to give me the freedom of the city, at twenty-five cents
per freedom. There is a good deal of this class of freedom now on the
Chicago market.
Chicago is a thriving, enterprising town on the Lake Michigan coast. It
is the county seat of Cook county, so that all the county officers live
here.
If a young man with the recuisite degree of pluck and determination
were to start a paper here, and could get the county printing and go
without a hired girl, he could do first-rate.
Chicago is a rival of Laramie as the most desirable outfitting point
for North Park. It also does some outfitting for South Park and several
other parks.
Yesterday I went to South Park to drive along the boulevards and see the
fountains squirt. The boulevards are now in good shape. They are about
the bouliest boulevards I have seen for five years. Some days when I
feel frolicsome, it seems to me as though if I couldn't have a nice
large park of my own, with velvet lawns and cool retreats in it, where
I could be alone and roll around over the green sward, and kick up my
heels in the chastened sunlight, I would certainly bust.
South Park has an antelope, a bison, an elk and several other ferocious
animals. They seem lonely, and time hangs heavy on their hands, so to
speak.
Going out to the park we met a funeral procession headed by a remains.
When we were coming out of the driveway on our return, we met the same
procession. It had transplanted the deceased in good shape, and was
racing horses on its way home through the park. The minister belonged
to the same family with the United Grand Junction Ebeneezer Temperance
Association, and although he was ostensibly holding on to his horse
with all the reserve forces on hand, he seemed to keep the rest of the
procession at a respectful distance all the way.
It was about the most cheerful funeral I ever saw, with the officiating
minister leading down the homestretch and the hearse at a Maud S. gait
rattling along at his heels, followed by the bereaved family coming down
the quarter-stretch in '45. It reconciled me a great deal to death
to see this. If I could be positively certain that my friends and
acquaintances would take it that easy I could die happy, but I know they
won't. I have seemed to work my way into the affections of those who
come in contact with me from day to day, so that when I die I know just
how it will be. There will be one of the wildest panics ever known in
the history of civilized nations. Groceries and all kinds of provisions
will depreciate in value fifty per cent, and watermelons will be almost
a drug on the market.
Allow me to digress for a moment. Watermelons are very high at Laramie,
and there is the standing joke that for three years I haven't had
sufficient decision of character and spinal column to make up my mind
whether I would build or buy a watermelon. Here watermelons are more
plentiful. They grow low down on the branches of the melon trees, so
that on a still evening one can easily knock them off with a club.
So easy in fact is that feat that I could hardly restrain myself from
taking a little stroll one pleasant evening to pick one or two luscious
specimens from the heavy laden boughs. So strong was this feeling at
least that I could not overcome it without an unusual strain, and my
physicians tell me not to do anything that will overtax my moral nature.
They are afraid that something would break and tear the whole vast
fabric of integrity from its foundation.
So I went out with a brother of mine who could be depended upon. I took
along my old pocket-knife that I have had for fifteen years, and which
has received the silver medal, sweepstakes prize and handicap silver
service in a score of go-as-you-please melon-plugging matches for the
championship of the known world.
But we were not very fortunate. The world is growing cynical and fast
losing faith in mankind, I fear. People have quit putting their money
into savings banks and are beginning to plant their watermelons in new
and obscure places. Just as the casual observer learns the position of
an eligible melon patch the proprietor changes the combination on him.